Arecibo Observatory: The Last Day
Well, this is it.
What a busy five days it has been. My receiver got installed on the dish and observations were made with it. We need to focus it, fix its pointing, figure out what's wrong with the cal and then calculate the Tsys and the SEFD. Which, unfortunately, is not likely to happen before I leave. I wish I had more time, but I've already been here almost a whole extra week.
Friday when we went up to install the receiver I tripped in the receiver room in the dome. Bruised my knee and wrist and got some delightfully square cuts. They're healing all right but I am worried about maybe having chipped something, and also an ugly bug bite which might be Lyme Disease! not likely here, but I'm a bit of a worrier.
Saturday we went to G.'s house for supper. His wife cooked some delicious South Indian food and we got to meet his daughter again. A good time was had by all and he loaned us his copy of Contact!
Sunday we did go to Playa Sucia, one of the prettiest beaches on the island. It was a really long drive, all the way to the south, and we left at noon so we got there at like four. Swimming in the Caribbean was great--the water was green and cloudy and warm and beautiful, and the salt did wonders for my wounds. We met a big hermit crab on Anthony's towel, and I found a bunch of sea shells. Then we went to La Parguera, the bioluminescent bay. There was a little too much city glow for the bay to look neat, but the sky was gorgeous, with a nice Milky Way and some dust lanes, and even some shooting stars.
We got in at 2am and I got up at 7am to come in and finish up my presentation, then headed up to the Visitor's Center early to practice. A quarter of the way up the extra giant hill (it's twice as tall as the way to my cabin!), one of the maintenance guys picked me up and drove me the rest of the way. I had a great, natural conversation in Spanish and it was delightful how easily I understood what was going on. The presentations went well and I got asked some really pleasant, thoughtful questions that I was totally able to answer. Post presentation, we had a party at the pool for a few hours.
Then I had two hours of observing time with three extraintelligent superbrits who spent the time three steps ahead of me but never unwilling to stop and help me figure out was going around. They ran around and shouted things and were swift at programming, and we fixed our first light signal until it got a lot prettier and the pulsar astronomer came to kick us out. So I returned to the pool, and we discussed so many intelligent things in a thoughtful, realistic, yet entertain manner until midnight. When we got back to the cabin, we watched Contact (loved it! turns out Jodie Foster stayed in the other cabin, though. What a disappointment. and that bedroom they show? that's the LIVING room. the actual bedrooms are much much smaller) and went to bed at 3. I almost stayed up for the sunrise but couldn't quite bring myself to do it.
Today has been super busy. Tons of running around, trying to get things to work, having final talks and presentations, doing pictures, meeting people. G. and D. took me out to lunch at Tony's Pizza and we've worked out the details on what we need to do next to get and keep my receiver functioning.
I get to look into coming back in January over winter break! I don't know how I'll juggle it around AAS and trips to prospective graduate schools, but it is worth a try. And I think if I don't get into graduate school, they'd have no problem taking me back for a year.
I am really going to miss this place. The strange, exotic nature of the nights, the dusks, the dawns, and the color of the sun and the sky during the day... all the greenery, the weird trees, the fresh fruit, the too sharp hills and the jagged cliffs and the giant cows. And the beaches. Definitely going to miss the beaches (I'm going one last time tonight in two hours). And I will miss all of the wonderful, amazing, friendly, kind, helpful, gracious people who have made this place a form of home. They have treated me as a scientist and as a peer and as a friend, and I have never felt more please nor more confident in my own abilities (except after going up to the platform). So thank you, to all of them.
What a busy five days it has been. My receiver got installed on the dish and observations were made with it. We need to focus it, fix its pointing, figure out what's wrong with the cal and then calculate the Tsys and the SEFD. Which, unfortunately, is not likely to happen before I leave. I wish I had more time, but I've already been here almost a whole extra week.
Friday when we went up to install the receiver I tripped in the receiver room in the dome. Bruised my knee and wrist and got some delightfully square cuts. They're healing all right but I am worried about maybe having chipped something, and also an ugly bug bite which might be Lyme Disease! not likely here, but I'm a bit of a worrier.
Saturday we went to G.'s house for supper. His wife cooked some delicious South Indian food and we got to meet his daughter again. A good time was had by all and he loaned us his copy of Contact!
Sunday we did go to Playa Sucia, one of the prettiest beaches on the island. It was a really long drive, all the way to the south, and we left at noon so we got there at like four. Swimming in the Caribbean was great--the water was green and cloudy and warm and beautiful, and the salt did wonders for my wounds. We met a big hermit crab on Anthony's towel, and I found a bunch of sea shells. Then we went to La Parguera, the bioluminescent bay. There was a little too much city glow for the bay to look neat, but the sky was gorgeous, with a nice Milky Way and some dust lanes, and even some shooting stars.
We got in at 2am and I got up at 7am to come in and finish up my presentation, then headed up to the Visitor's Center early to practice. A quarter of the way up the extra giant hill (it's twice as tall as the way to my cabin!), one of the maintenance guys picked me up and drove me the rest of the way. I had a great, natural conversation in Spanish and it was delightful how easily I understood what was going on. The presentations went well and I got asked some really pleasant, thoughtful questions that I was totally able to answer. Post presentation, we had a party at the pool for a few hours.
Then I had two hours of observing time with three extraintelligent superbrits who spent the time three steps ahead of me but never unwilling to stop and help me figure out was going around. They ran around and shouted things and were swift at programming, and we fixed our first light signal until it got a lot prettier and the pulsar astronomer came to kick us out. So I returned to the pool, and we discussed so many intelligent things in a thoughtful, realistic, yet entertain manner until midnight. When we got back to the cabin, we watched Contact (loved it! turns out Jodie Foster stayed in the other cabin, though. What a disappointment. and that bedroom they show? that's the LIVING room. the actual bedrooms are much much smaller) and went to bed at 3. I almost stayed up for the sunrise but couldn't quite bring myself to do it.
Today has been super busy. Tons of running around, trying to get things to work, having final talks and presentations, doing pictures, meeting people. G. and D. took me out to lunch at Tony's Pizza and we've worked out the details on what we need to do next to get and keep my receiver functioning.
I get to look into coming back in January over winter break! I don't know how I'll juggle it around AAS and trips to prospective graduate schools, but it is worth a try. And I think if I don't get into graduate school, they'd have no problem taking me back for a year.
I am really going to miss this place. The strange, exotic nature of the nights, the dusks, the dawns, and the color of the sun and the sky during the day... all the greenery, the weird trees, the fresh fruit, the too sharp hills and the jagged cliffs and the giant cows. And the beaches. Definitely going to miss the beaches (I'm going one last time tonight in two hours). And I will miss all of the wonderful, amazing, friendly, kind, helpful, gracious people who have made this place a form of home. They have treated me as a scientist and as a peer and as a friend, and I have never felt more please nor more confident in my own abilities (except after going up to the platform). So thank you, to all of them.